AzieltheLiar,

An incorrectly configured router can be a cause (if not the cause) behind the connection issues that you and many others have been experiencing as of late. As we’ve indicated previously, the FINAL FANTASY XI software on your machine requires access across a large range of ports. This is because of how servers for a MMO are set up.

When you are connecting to a world server, you are not connecting to one single machine hosting the data for that server, but one out of a number of servers in a farm. Different zones on a world will be hosted on different servers within the farm for that world, and that connection can use any number of ports in the range that FINAL FANTASY XI needs access to.

So when you experience a problem where you can connect to the world server with Character B, but Character A on that same server receives timeout errors, that means that Character A’s connection is being blocked by an improperly configured router, whereas Character B’s connection is getting through.

We hope this explanation helps you understand the situation, and why we provide the resolution that we do.